When it launched in June 2010, subscribers got select monthly games and DLC on the house, early access to select game betas and Full Game Trials; the latter was new at the time and even saved progress and trophies earned along the way. All this cost $50/year, or $18/quarter, with no single-month subscription available then.
By the end of 2016, the service saw a slight price hike but finally became available for a single month, originally costing $10. The other packages rose from $18 to $25/quarter, and from $50 to $60/year. In doing so, the company said, “The new pricing reflects the current market conditions while enabling us to continue to provide exceptional value.” Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t the last time a similar excuse came around.
In 2022, a little over a year after the PS5 launched, PlayStation Plus changed in a significant way to compete with Microsoft’s Game Pass. With three tiers to choose from — Essential, Extra and Premium — Sony delivered a swarm of new features that once cost gamers up to $120/year for the Premium plan, which now costs $160/year.
Earlier this year, Sony said that both one- and three-month subscriptions would see a $1/month uptick due to “ongoing market conditions.” The Essential tier, now $11/month, $28/quarter and $80/year, includes all the original subscription’s features: discounts, online multiplayer access and free monthly games.
Next up, for $17/month, $44/quarter or $135/year, PlayStation Plus Extra lets players access up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games, including Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered and Dead by Daylight, as well as plenty of other first- and third-party titles.
Lastly, PlayStation Plus Premium is the end-all, be-all, with all the games in the Extra tier, plus streaming access to a massive library of retro games spanning the entire PlayStation lineup, including the PSP. To access this, it’ll cost $20/month, $55/quarter or $160/year.
